NIEMOpen


NIEMOpen, frequently referred to as NIEM, originated as an XML-based information exchange framework from the United States, but has transitioned to an OASIS 'Open Project. This initiative formalizes NIEM's designation as an official standard in national and international policy and procurement. NIEMOpen's Project Governing Board recently approved the first standard under this new project; the Conformance Targets Attribute Specification Version 3.0. A full collection of NIEMOpen standards are anticipated by end of year 2024.
NIEM offers a common vocabulary that enables effective information exchanges across diverse public and private organizations. NIEM is currently developing which can be expressed in any data serialization that NIEM supports, including, but not limited to JSON.
Formed from an interagency partnership, NIEM has come to represent a collaborative partnership of agencies and organizations across all levels of government in addition to private industry. The purpose of this partnership is to effectively and efficiently share critical information at key decision points throughout the whole of the justice, public safety, emergency and disaster management, intelligence, United States Department of Defense and homeland security enterprise. NIEM is designed to develop, disseminate, and support enterprise-wide information exchange standards and processes that will enable jurisdictions to automate information sharing.
Today, NIEMOpen is sponsored by the Joint Staff J6 Directorate within the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, the FBI Criminal Justice Information Services within the U.S. FBI, Equivant, Georgia Tech Research Institute, the National Association for Justice Information Systems, sFractal Consulting LLC, the IJIS Institute, the US Department of Transportation, and the Virginia Office of Data Governance and Analytics. NIEM provides a working and collaborative partnership among governmental agencies, operational practitioners, systems developers, and standards bodies across Federal, State, Local, Tribal, Territorial, International and Private organizations.
NIEM has been identified as a key enabler for Joint All Domain Command and Control '. NIEM is cited in the JADC2 Reference Architecture Version 3.0 Enclosure D within the Application and services, Interface and Data & Information principals. JADC2 Reference Design Version 1.0, Standard View 2.
NIEM most recently was referred to as the National Information Exchange Model. That interagency government project was an outgrowth of the United States Department of Justice's Global Justice XML Data Model project. As an interagency project it was expanded to include other federal and state agencies such as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, United States Department of Defense, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, and others.

Introduction

NIEM is designed to facilitate the creation of automated enterprise-wide information exchanges which can be uniformly developed, centrally maintained, quickly identified and discovered, and efficiently reused.

Key concepts

The following key concepts are essential to understanding the purpose, architecture, processes, and other capabilities of NIEM, as well as to establish a common knowledge base with which to develop the ability to use NIEM effectively.
Data Components. The fundamental building block of NIEM is the data component. Data components are the basic business data elements that represent real-world objects and concepts. Information exchanged between agencies can be broken down into individual components – for example, information about people, places, material things, and events. Components that are frequently and uniformly used in practice are specified in NIEM and can then be reused by practitioners for information exchanges, regardless of the nature of their business or the operational context of their exchanges, provided they are semantically consistent.
Information Exchange Package Documentation. The information that is commonly or universally exchanged between participating domains can be organized into information exchange packages in the form of XML Schemas. An example of this collection of information is data associated with an arrest. The data to be exchanged includes not only descriptive and personal identification data regarding the individual arrested but also information about the person's alleged offense, the location of the offense, the arresting officer, etc. The IEP represents a set of data that is actually transmitted between agencies for a specific business purpose. It includes the actual XML instance that delivers the payload or information. Additional information regarding this specific exchange can be further documented in the form of an information exchange package documentation, which also contains data describing the structure, content, and other artifacts of the information exchange. An IEPD supports a specific set of business requirements in an operational setting.
NIEM Core. Data components within an information exchange that are universally shared and understood among all domains are identified as universal components. To become a universal component, consensus by all domains is needed on the semantics and structure of the component. The set of NIEM universal components is stable and relatively small.
Domains. For purposes of NIEM, a domain refers to a business enterprise broadly reflecting the agencies, units of government, operational functions, services, and information systems which are organized or affiliated to meet common objectives. NIEM domains are organized to facilitate governance, and each has some measure of persistency. Each domain traditionally includes a cohesive group of data stewards who are subject matter experts, have some level of authority within the domains they represent, and participate in the processes related to harmonizing conflicts and resolving data component ambiguities.
Communities of Interest. Communities of interest are collaborative groups of users who exchange information in pursuit of shared goals, interests, missions, or business processes and who therefore must have a shared vocabulary for the information they exchange. COIs reuse data components and artifacts found in NIEM to document their information exchanges. One or more COIs can coordinate to develop new domain content as they identify gaps in the data components needed for documenting information exchanges.
NIEM Conformance. There are NIEM conformance rules that serve as guidelines for agencies utilizing NIEM to implement their information sharing exchanges. Grantees developing inter-agency XML-based exchanges must comply with the special condition language contained in the grant, and follow the associated NIEM implementation guidelines.

Organizational support

NIEM Management Office

The NIEM Management Office operates to:
  • Bring stakeholders, agencies, and the domains and COIs that they represent together to identify information sharing requirements in daily operational and emergency situations;
  • Develop information sharing standards, a common lexicon, and an online repository of information exchange package documentation and data components that support information sharing;
  • Provide technical tools, processes, and methodologies to support the analysis, development, discovery, dissemination, and reuse of exchange standards and documents; and
  • Provide training, technical assistance, communication, outreach, and implementation support services for NIEM-based information sharing.

    Training and other technical resources

NIEM is a continually evolving program, and new agencies and COIs are joining the effort all the time. As new stakeholders come on board, they need to receive information to gain understanding and knowledge of the core capabilities of NIEM and how to engage in NIE information exchanges. In 2022, NIEM created a training video series on that includes a technical deep dive and is intended to support developers and implementers. Monthly users can sign up for virtual training sessions which includes the pre-recorded videos in addition to a live session with a NIEM expert who will answer questions in real-time. NIEM.gov provides written training materials, such as briefings and process-related documentation on , as well as other resources, such as the . Training provides the knowledge and know-how stakeholders need to use the tools and other capabilities provided by NIEM. NIEM tools and training opportunities are further described below. Other training materials, such as executive briefings, marketing material, and briefings for conferences and workshops, are offered from time to time and are tailored depending on the audience. A selection of online materials are also available both from the main NIEM.gov web site and resources such as .

NIEM.gov website

The serves as a primary means by which NIEM can provide the latest documentation and downloads to those interested in NIEM. It also serves as a starting point for those wishing to contact NIEM staff with questions, support, and information requests. As related projects, tools, and support resources develop around NIEM, the Web site will expand as the hub for these supplemental resources.

Technical standards

NIEM adopts standard XML schema constructs and methods, such as roles, associations, and augmentation from industry standards, such as the World Wide Web Consortium XML Schema language.

NIEM schemas

The NIEM reference schemas are a set of interrelated schemas that define NIEM data components. Each schema defines its own target namespace. Schemas in the reference set may import one another by namespace in order to use components they define. In general, domain reference schemas import schemas from the Core. The NIEM reference schema set represents the full set of data components in NIEM.
The following kinds of XML schemas are associated with the NIEM architecture:
  • NIEM reference schemas: Schemas containing content created or approved by the NIEM steering committees are periodically released in schema distributions.
  • Subset Schema: a NIEM-conformant schema, containing only the parts of the reference schemas needed to support a particular exchange.
  • Support schemas: NIEM includes three special schemas, appinfo, structures and proxy, for annotating and structuring NIEM-conformant schemas.
  • Extension Schema: a NIEM-conformant schema which adds domain- or application-specific content to the base NIEM model.
  • Exchange Schema: a NIEM-conformant schema which specifies a document in a particular exchange.
  • Constraint Schema: a NIEM-conformant schema which adds additional constraints to NIEM-conformant instances, but which is assumed to validate in concert with existing NIEM-conformant or subset schemas. A constraint schema need not validate constraints that are applied by other schemas.
  • Codelist Schemas: a NIEM-conformant schema which provides a list of acceptable values that a data element will be constrained to.
The only mandatory schemas for validation are the NIEM reference schemas or a correct subset, however the IEPD specification requires that an IEPD include an exchange schema to be considered a complete IEPD. The NIEM schemas may import additional schemas, such as code table schemas, as needed. An optional extension schema may be used to add extended types and properties for components not contained in NIEM, but which are needed for the exchange.